If I understand it right, in C++, which is where I first learned OOP, instantiating a child object always instantiates a complete object of the base class as well. All of the base class data members and methods are availabe, even if they are overidden by the child.

The problem that I started with is one that I've never had in C++ (or python as far as I recall). That doesn't mean that perl is "bad" or anything. Just different. I see that there is a different approach to OO in perl than C++. Nothing wrong with different, per se.

I like all the interesting ideas presented in these solutions. But I didn't use any of them. Most of them require the parent to have some knowledge of the children that may inherit from it. Which is a big OO no-no in my opinion.

What I ended up doing was replicating some of the parent method's functionality in the child method. This is something that I shouldn't have to do. That's part of the point of inheritance to re-use that code. But I find that with perl, its easier to do that than to go through shenannigans to access parent methods of a parent object that is never actually instantiated...

Thanks for your many replies. it has been a learning experience, and I will continue to follow the thread and I will return to perl-monks now that I have found such a great community!

In reply to Re^3: my $self is stumped! by headybrew
in thread my $self is stumped! by headybrew

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